Transformers: Sentinels - Book 1 Emergence
by mandowriter
Summary: A lone group of Autobots arrive on earth over a decade before Optimus and his team. With a mission from the great Sentinel Prime himself, they discover a plot set in motion by Megatron that could lead to the unearthing of a weapon that could mean the end of all Cybertronian life.
1. Chapter 1

The following takes place approximately three years before the events of

the first Transformers Live Action Movie

Part 1

"What the hell are you doing now?" the chief engineer barked over the mechanical thrumming of the motor pool. The target of his indignant yell was an oil stained sleeve that was protruding between the two large black tires at the rear of an old, yellow airfield fire-truck. The arm did not react, but merely continued to search aimlessly for something that wasn't there. After another thirty seconds of no response, the chief could take no more. He stepped forward and stood on the tips of the fingers, light enough to not break them, but hard enough to make them sore.

That got a reaction.

The arm tried to pull away sharply, and a loud thunk echoed out from beneath the fire-truck, followed almost instantly by a long, lingering groan of pain. Lifting his foot, the chief let the hand shoot back under the truck, and waited as the rest of the young mechanic slowly crawled his way out on his knees, one hand supporting his weight, the other clamped tight against his head, rubbing it where he had smacked it against the drive shaft.

"I'll ask you again," the chief said grumpily, looking down at the young man. "What the hell do you think you are doing?" It took a few moments to get a reply, as the young mechanic sat himself on the concrete floor of the garage and rested himself back against the big tyres.

"I want to know why it doesn't work," he seemed to whine.

"It doesn't work because it's an awkward piece of shit that the bosses decided to buy without letting me take a look at her first," the chief hissed.

He had already been having a bad day before he had stepped into the motor pool. His car had needed to be jump started by his neighbour with whom he did not get on, his wife had forgotten to pack his lunch forcing him to pay for what passes as food at the canteen, and security had chosen that morning to demand that all their vehicles be serviced and checked. Apparently they had developed a persistent fault ever since that unexplained meteor shower the week before.

He didn't know, or care, what the fault was. He just knew that he had ten cars and jeeps to service by the end of the day, a loading truck with dodgy hydraulics, a towing tug that needed a complete front rebuild after a collision with a wall, and now an annoying mechanic had taken it upon himself to lumber them with another big project he could be doing without – the fire-truck.

"Get that thing out of here," he grumbled, turning his back on the unsightly beast, the patches of rust that were scattered across the body turning his stomach.

"But..." the young mechanic began, but the chief cut him off.

"Now!" he barked.

"But... I can't," he said, still rubbing his bruised and reddened knuckles.

"Why not?" the chief growled, rounding on him sharply.

"I may have, kinda, broken the tow truck trying to get the fire-truck out before you got back," he admitted grudgingly, shuffling quickly to his feet, his eyes flickering to the distant corner of the garage.

The chief looked back over his shoulder and felt a shiver of sadness flood through his spine. There, in the shadows, he could see the old work horse, with a heartbreaking ribbon of steam hissing from the radiator and a river of hydraulic fluid gushing from beneath.

"I'm sorry, chief..." the young mechanic began, but the chief simply held up a hand to silence him. He clamped his other across his face, pinching the bridge of his nose hard as he crunched his eyes shut.

"Just go," he said with all the control he could muster. He did not turn around until he could hear the young mechanics feet shuffling rapidly across the oily concrete floor, and vanishing into silence as the door to the crew room slammed shut. Left along, the chief risked opening his eyes once more, and felt a stab of pain hit at his heart. The tow truck had been on the base longer than he had, and it had been one of the first things he had repaired. That had been the beginning of a life long love affair with the old girl, and to see it sad and broken in the corner left him feeling broken.

Glancing back over his shoulder, he gave the old fire truck a sneer of hatred and, hunching his back, walked away from it towards the nearest security vehicle to begin its service.

* * *

Jaknife watched the chief engineer walk away towards the black cars, happy that once again he had escaped an inspection. It was the third time he had found himself being forced into this dingy, dank building and his undersides poked and prodded. But thankfully the grumpy middle aged human had never looked at him close enough to notice the obvious. He was more than an old, clapped out fire truck, with rust creeping across almost every joint, sealing the faded silver shutters tight. He was more than a broken down emergency vehicle, the yellow paint faded, and the red stripes chipping.

He was an Transformer, a cybernetic life-form from the distant planet of Cybertron, and part of a military faction named the Autobots. His home planet had been abandoned many, many years ago, lost to the cold reaches of space when a civil war had burned across its surface. The Autobots had tried in vain to stop the rapid rise of the Decepticons and their tyrannical leader, Megatron. The war raged for years, and cost both sides greatly. Megatron finally breached the memory core at the heart of Cybertron and learned of devices of great power that had been cast out across the galaxy. In his unending quest for absolute power, he left the planet in search of these relics.

Fearing what he would do if he acquired any of these devises, the Autobots gave chase.

A few brave 'bots stayed behind to defend what was left from the vast forces of the Decepticons Megatron left behind, but it was in vain. Jaknife and his team were the last to leave.

For years they had floated through the vast nothingness, cold and alone until they received word from a moon orbiting a small, bluey-green planet that clung to the warmth of a distant yellow sun. A planet called Earth.

Sentinel Prime, the hero of the war and the one remaining Prime, had fled Cybertron in the Ark with a weapon that would have changed the outcome of the war. His ship had been thought lost during its escape, shot down by Starscream – Megatron's first commander. But now it appeared that they had escaped and had crashed, activating the emergency distress beacon. Calculating their position, Jaknife and his team found the wreck of the Ark, and the crew still inside, all locked in stasis.

The side of the ship had suffered major breaches to the outer hull, and there was signs of scorch marks across the antennae and drive pods. Decepticons had played a hand in their crash.

Without the power of a Prime, there had been no way to wake the Autobot crew from their slumber. But with a bit of work, the team's scout had nursed the computers back into life, if only momentarily. In the damaged core of the ship, they found a list of locations plotted across the planet they were orbiting. Their purpose, Jaknife could not discover, but if they were logged in the Ark's computer, they must have been vital. With no other idea of what to do, and evidence of Decepticons having followed the Ark, Jaknife took the data and returned to his ship, vowing to find those locations and defend them in the name of Cybertron.

For over ten years, that is what he and his team had done. In that time they had almost no contact with other Cybertronian signals, either Autobot or Decepticons. The only exception had been the whispered signals from the crashed Decepticon ship, the Nemesis, that was lying derelict on some other distant planet. Nevertheless, they maintained a constant vigil.

Their mission had now brought them here, to this unassuming airbase on the eastern coast of a country the natives called Scotland. After almost a decade of searching, they had finally picked up a faint Cybertronian signal. Something had been unearthed.

The big rolling door to the garage shuddered visibly as it began to raise into the roof and revealed the wet, rain-splattered landscape beyond. The distant mountains were shrouded in the dark grey clouds as they hung low in the sky, and the trees beyond the perimeter fence leaned painfully as the gale force winds whipped up through the valley across the mile long stretch of tarmac. The rumbling growl of a massive plane's straining engines slowly grew louder, echoing across the almost still base. The clouds tore open, and a military cargo plane sliced through, dropping out of the clouds as a whale breaks through the foamy ocean. It dropped lower and lower, until its wheels squealed loudly, the rubber tyres suddenly dragging along the tarmac.

A silent crackle whispered in Jaknife's ear as the communicator burst into life. It was followed almost instantly by a grumpy sounding voice.

"Jak," it hissed. "It's here."


	2. Chapter 2

Part 2

The cargo plane had stayed very still for almost an hour, sitting on the runway like a black tiger, waiting in the pouring rain. A waterfall of droplets cascaded down from the back of the wings, the dark shadows cast beneath its bulk growing thicker as the misty, rainy Scottish day quickly gave way to twilight. Nothing ventured near the silent beast.

In the growing gloom, the humans on the airbase would have normally begun preparing to shut down an return to their homes. But today, no one left. The gates were locked, with three heavily armed guards posted both in front of and behind the large metal grates. All movement on the base had been suspended, and all the windows that faced the runway had been covered, their blinds closed.

Something big was happening.

Quad sat at the top of the rise at the end of one of the smaller side runways, overlooking the entire base from her only vantage point. She had decided this was the best spot, as it gave her the greatest field of vision, but it also allowed her to tap into the human's communications array by receiving the signals from the nearby masts.

Disguised as a farmers all terrain vehicle, her name seemed aptly appropriate. It had in fact been a large factor in the choice of her vehicle form. When she discovered a vehicle existed with her name, she couldn't help herself. It was a quirk that others on the team saw as a little bit pointless. If it did the job, it was good enough for them. But Quad enjoyed a bit of style.

"It's getting dark, Quad," a familiar, deep voice whispered across the team channel. Jaknife was checking in. "Sitrep?"

"Still nothing, Jak," she replied patiently. "All quiet."

"Has everyone checked in?"

"I've got eyes on you and on Tumbler."

"Where's Ripchord?"

"You know him, he'll be around."

"Roger that. Keep me posted."

As the team's communications specialist, she had found that a smaller vehicle mode was overlooked by the humans, and it also allowed her to get closer to where she needed to be. From her vantage point, she could see almost every inch of the base, and she could pick up all signals from a ten mile radius. If something moved, she'd know about it.

She cast her scanners across the far side of the base, watching the distant horizon while the soft crackling of the radios hissed in her ear. Every now and then she could hear the humans comment something, before falling silent once more, their voices replaced by the drone of white noise.

"How's it looking, 'Bug-eyes'," a voice grumbled, cutting across the static. Quad swept her scanner across to the eastern side of the base, and up to the forest edge. A blue box appeared around a shadow hidden inside the trees, a vague figure shuffling just beyond the swaying tree trunks. She recognised the voice, and pushed back a surge of irritation at hearing the nickname he insisted on calling her.

"Better before you chimed in, Tumbler," she hissed. "Shouldn't you be in vehicle mode?" she asked, the scanners tracking him as he paced back and forth, before leaning against one of the larger trees.

"I was getting cramp," he replied, a pained groan seeping through his voice. "All this rain is playing havoc with my joints."

"Don't you ever stop complaining?" she sighed. "Thought you were tougher than this? All you've done since we got here is moan about the weather. What about all those battles you were in, and all those times you had to fight your way out?"

"Those were tough jobs," Tumbler's voice grumbled. "And it wasn't raining."

Quad giggled to herself at the thought of the tough war veteran sneering up at the grey clouds as they slowly washed across the valley. She knew he did not think much of her - being the youngest in the unit was always a tricky position to occupy – but she knew that without her, they were blind.

The rain grew heavier as the night rolled in, the dark grey clouds succumbing to the thick darkness of night. Lights flared into life all across the base, dousing everything in a soft orange glow that flickered as the drops of rain fell through the beams. The cargo plane still sat silently on the runway, the lights around it shining up from the floor and illuminating the underside of the wings. Zooming in quickly on the side of the fuselage, Quad logged the planes ident, just in case.

Sitting patiently on the rise looking down over the airbase, with no cover, the rain was almost impossible to stand. It hammered against her, and even though she could take a lot, she could not see the point in getting soaked. Revving her engine, she reversed up the hill and into the old abandoned barn that was part of the small cluster of buildings that made up Windbreak Hill, a long since silenced farm. Slipping into the relative shelter of the barn, and making sure she was covered by the shadows within, she transformed from her vehicle state, the various panels slipping aside, and her limbs unfolding to stand tall. She had to agree with Tumbler, it felt better to be standing on her own feet than curled up in vehicle mode. Of course, she would never admit that to his face.

More human voices crackled across the radio frequencies that she was monitoring. She turned towards the source of the transmissions, flicking her head down and dropping her scanner goggles down into place. An orange box appeared in front of her eyes over the small flat building near the edge of the base, and speaker lines pulsed from it, indicating where the voices were broadcasting from. A hundred meters away, a blue box appeared, showing the garage where Jaknife was still waiting.

"...We will have to wait until dawn before we begin to unload," the voice said patiently, but with a hint of uncertainty. "That's when the specialist team will arrive to transport it to a safe holding facility. Until then, I want that plane locked down. No one enters of leaves that thing until the morning." Quad sighed. Clicking the channels over, she switched to the team frequency.

"There's a special team coming to relieve them of the artefact at dawn,' she stated. "Until then, they are locking the place down. We're in for a long night, Jak."

"Roger that," Jaknife's voice replied calmly. "Stay alert, and stay out of sight."

"Yeah, Tumbler," Quad bit jokingly. Tumbler huffed.

Sitting herself down in the opening of the barn, Quad leaned back against the doorframe and settled herself in for a long and wet evening.

* * *

Midnight came and went, the rain unending, turning the runway into a glistening river of water that shined in the bright glow of the landing lights and the spots that had all been turned towards the silent, statue-like cargo plane. In the complete darkness, the only movement was the clouds as they rolled silently by, heading north.

The wind howled outside the rolling shutter-style doors of the garage, the rain lashing hard against the grimy, green skylight above Jaknife. In the echoing space, nothing moved. The only sounds that Jaknife could hear were the hammering of the raindrops on the roof, and soft hiss of the television in the crew room that had been left on. As the storm had moved in, the satellite signal had been blocked by the weather, much to the annoyance of the two men who had apparently drawn the short straw and had been assigned with the night watch. Not that there was anything much to do when the whole base had been put on lockdown.

Both humans were currently asleep in the crew room - one sprawled out face down across the sofa, his face half buried in the pillow and his arm hanging down to the floor, and the other was dozing in the arm chair, his feet resting on the coffee table in the middle of the room. As night had rolled in, the temperature had begun to drop rapidly, especially in the draughty, cavernous garage. The humans had rolled out an electric heater that glowed orange in the crew room, a puddle of warmth fighting against the cold.

Jaknife felt the cold as well, but not in the same way as the humans did. His metallic body was not as susceptible to the extreme temperature changes that plagued these fragile human creatures, but it did stir memories that had been buried deep within his mind for almost fifty years.

Images of Cybertron flashed in before him, the tall, sky-piercing towers that had once gleamed in the glow of Alpha Centari. The wide plains of the silicon desert stretching out towards the distant horizon had once been a sight to behold as the morning broke across the metallic city of Iacon. He had known the streets better than he ever cared to tell. In his youth, he had been a sculptor, a creator of all things beautiful and meaningful. His works had sat in the squares and on the plinths around the main data retrieval centre.

But then the Decepticons came. He had tried to stay out of the fighting, hoping that diplomacy would reign and stop the war before it began. He had even sat and listened as Orion Pax had Megatron had sought to change their society with words. But that was before Megatron had revealed his true nature. He turned on Orion Pax, declaring civil war on all who opposed them, and with that, they brought the carnage of war, and the destruction that burned through Iacon. Towers crumbled. Walls fell. And all that had been beautiful was torn asunder, smashed under the solid feet of Megatron and his followers.

Jaknife had nothing left, and in order to defend the Cybertron he had loved, he took up the call to arms, and joined the Autobots.

But by the end, there was hardly anything left to defend. Iacon had all but been razed to the ground. His home was gone, and so were all the other homes in the city. Towers lay broken and torn, hollow shells that had once held the living people of Cybertron. The last day that he had seen Iacon, had been the day he had boarded his ship with the rest of his unit. The sun had not risen that morning, hidden behind the dark billowing columns of smoke that rose through the frozen air. As he had looked down from the broken tower into what had once been a beautiful plaza, he could see the remains of one of his statues. It lay on the floor, the limbs twisted and half melted by the intensity of the battle that had claimed the western walls. And the head had been brutally severed.

The heartbreaking thing was, that he did not know which side had dealt the final blow to his creation. He guessed it did not really matter any more. That was no longer his life.

A soft crackling in his ear dragged him away from his thoughts, and he let them recede back into the darkened corners of his memories.

"What's going on, Quad?" he asked sharply, a little more harshly than he had intended. It took her a few moments to reply, and when she did, her voice sounded flustered beneath the hissing of the radio. The signal was breaking up.

"Uncertain," she replied simply. "Something is trying to block our transmissions."

"Something, or someone?" Jaknife asked quickly.

"Unclear," Quad said. "It could be the storm, but it hasn't seemed to suddenly get any worse."

Checking to see that the two mechanics were still passed out in the crew room, Jaknife gingerly edged his way forwards towards the roller doors, and looked out through the small windows that were set into the shutters about half way up. Through them he could see most of the runway, and was just about able to see the plane at the far end, still sitting like a swan on her eggs.

It was all so quiet.

A sudden rush of noise, like a jet engine, seemed to sweep over the base. The rain fell hard against the windows, but beyond, something was moving.

Jaknife felt a pulse wash over him, like a jolt of electricity pulsing through the ground. The hissing of the radio died, as did the white noise of the tv in the crew room. He could see the lights along the runway flicker. They strained, and stuttered, then extinguished completely.

"EMP," he whispered to himself.

The base plunged into darkness.


	3. Chapter 3

Part 3

Quad scrambled out from the old broken barn, her heavy metallic feet sinking into the rain-soaked mud as she ran towards the edge of the rise, skidding to a stop and flicking the scope that rested across her forehead down across her eyes. An electronic whine burst into life, rising until it was almost inaudible and the almost invisible world of night flickered and resolved into an eerie green landscape as the night-vision kicked in, outlining everything in hazy green shadows. As fast as she could, she swept her eyes across the base, first checking on the plane that seemed to be carrying the Cybertronian artefact.

It was still there, now bathed in darkness where moments before it had been lit up like a sun. Lights flickered inside, weeping wildly across the windows. The crew must have found torches and were frantically searching for a cause to the black out. They had obviously not yet realised that it had affected the whole base.

Certain that the plane was mostly unaffected and seemed to be in no imminent danger, she dragged her eyes back across the rest of the base. It seemed to have erupted into chaos. Men were running out from the buildings, torch lights flashing all over the fences, trying to jump into the cars that were parked outside. The armed guards near the gates were already climbing back out of their vehicles, having already discovered that whatever had caused the blackout had also rendered their car's electronics useless. The radios had also failed, and they had resorted to yelling to one another over the howling wind and the thrashing rain. It was pandemonium.

Rotating frequencies on her own communicator, Quad found that her own systems had been compromised, if only a little. There was interference on nearly all the channels she was broadcasting on and monitoring. Adjusting the settings, she set about scrubbing up the signal. As the hissing grew weaker, she heard a voice trying to break through.

"Quad," Jaknife's voice crackled finally across the communicator. "Can you hear me?"

"Just about, Jak," she hissed. "Receiving strength two. My systems have been hit bad."

"The plane?" Jaknife asked hurriedly.

"Still there," she reassured him, sweeping her night-vision back towards it just to make sure. The side door was now open, and one of the crew had stepped out and was sweeping his torch across the outer fuselage to check for damage.

"What the hell hit us?"

"Unknown," Quad replied nervously. "Scanners were clear."

"Well there's obviously something nearby," Tumbler cut across, his angry tone crackling noisily in Quad's ear. "And I doubt very much if its anything human."

Quad was worried. She had been the unit scout ever since the early days of the war on Cybertron, and she had never missed a signal. Even in the dark days when they had been stuck deep in Decepticon territory and they had managed to evade detection by always staying one step head of the hunters that roamed the waste lands to the north of Iacon – a place that had come to be known as 'the sea of the dead'. She had led them through the catacombs that snaked beneath the barren waste lands above for eight straight days before they emerged in the vaults beneath Iacon.

"I'm having to do a rapid reset of my systems to debug the effects of the EMP," she said, keeping her eyes locked on the base. If she was going to be deaf for a few minutes while her scanners sorted themselves out, she was damned if she was going to be blind as well.

"Where's Ripchord?" Tumbler grumbled, irritated.

"He's around," Quad lied. She had not had a lock on him for over twelve hours now. He had simply vanished off the scopes, a trick that he seemed to be able to pull at will. It had unnerved her the first few times, hearing a voice spark up beside her without having tracked him from over three miles away.

"Stow the chatter," Jaknife's voice cut across sharply. "Focus on the job. Quad, get your scanners up and running ASAP. Tumbler, keep your eyes peeled. I'm certain now that there is something of interest hidden inside that plane, and someone wants to get their hands on it."

"Roger that," Quad said, gritting her teeth. "Reboot at forty percent. Twenty seconds left."

Words flickered quickly across the side of her night vision goggles as the scanners flashed through the start up sequence once more. Noises crackled and popped in her ears as she swept the base, watching for any movement that wasn't human or Autobot. The humans ran around like insects, orange outlines of their bodies sprinting through the darkness, the pathetic beams of light from their torches barely stretching out into the thick night. Blue outlines showed her where the rest of her unit were hiding – Tumbler seen as a tall figure standing in the shade of the trees on the far side of the base, and a blue outline of a fire truck sat patiently inside the motor pool. She knew that Jaknife was secretly gearing up for a fight inside, but that he also had amazing self control and was somehow able to sit there and remain hidden. Quad wasn't sure she would be able to do that if it as her in that position.

"Five seconds," she announced.

The howling wind seemed to grow louder, drowning the pattering of raindrops across her metallic armour. She thought nothing of it for a moment,the wind had been gusting randomly all evening. But it continued to grow louder, the soft rumble increasing to a violent roar.

"What the scrap...?" she hissed.

Looking up, she watched the green coloured clouds above her ripple, the night vision making it look like an ocean of emerald slime. It bubbled and rolled on, lashing its payload of rain across the countryside. But through the centre, just above the clouds, something moved, leaving a fan-like trail in its wake. Before she could even realise what was happening, an arrow-head like shape dropped through the clouds, jinked sideways and flew over the cargo plane. It dropped something, and banked hard to port.

The plane erupted in a blinding ball of light.

The door to the garage buckled sharply and tore open, the massive bulk of the fire truck slicing through the aged metal shutters. Jaknife skidded sideways, his wheels skipping across the water covered tarmac like a stone across a pond. They spun wildly as he struggled to control the skid, before he went for full acceleration and he tore through the darkness towards the runways.

From inside the power drained garage, he had watched the events unfold. In less than a second, the world had erupted in a blinding white light, a fireball blossoming from the spot where he had seen the plane only a heartbeat before. A deafening boom had shattered the white noise of the wind and the rain. The light tore through the darkness and sliced through Jaknife's eyes, almost blinding him.

He had grunted in pain, and had been forced to look away. When he finally looked back again less than a second later, the plane had gone. And so had the humans who had been inside. The plane itself had been sliced in two, the centre section reduced to nothing, with torn and ripped metal edges showing where it had once connected to the front and back of the plane. And beneath it was a cratered runway.

It was obvious now that they were under attack by hostile forces that had little or no regard for human life. It was time to act. In a second, he had rammed the doors, and was now racing through the rain soaked night towards the flickering orange and red inferno. The blue lights above the front windows of the fire truck were flashing wildly, pulsing neon stars flying through the darkness. The siren whooped and screeched loudly.

Jaknife was half way towards reaching the wreckage when he heard the same whooshing sound he had heard only moments before slicing through the howling rain above his head. Pulses of blue energy shot out through the gloom and slammed into the tarmac in front of him. He swerved to avoid them as they strafed across the runway, missing him only by inches. Staring up into the dark storm-filled sky, looking through the pulsing of his own lights, he saw a vague shape zoom past, heading towards the east side of the base. It dropped low, and released another device before snapping upwards and vanishing into the clouds again. He could see a large building beneath it, the big metal doors beginning to roll up into the ceiling to reveal the large vehicles inside, their own blue lights flickering. The first vehicle had started to crawl out from inside when the building vanished in another blinding ball of flames, and it was only then that Jaknife realised what had happened.

They had targeted the fire response unit. They had seen Jaknife rolling towards the wreck, mistaking him for a human fire-truck, and had decided that they obviously did not want any more interruptions. The humans had been wiped out in cold blood.

Jaknife felt a surge of hatred flow through him, radiating from his very Spark. Life was the right of all sentient beings, and for it to be taken away so callously by anyone was something Jaknife would not stand.

Forgetting about the cargo plane, he shifted his attention towards the enemy that was hiding in the clouds above his head. He heard it roaring back towards the cargo plane once more, dropping lower, more energy pulses slamming into the ground around him as it came up behind him. He slammed on the brakes and skidded sideways, swinging the back end around and bringing himself to face his attacker. Going to full acceleration once more, he raced towards the enemy, rage flooding his body as the gap between them closed at an incredible rate.

They were only a few tens of meters apart now, and Jaknife played his hand. Firing a burst of water from the roof mounted cannon, it slammed into the unidentified plane. The plane pulled up momentarily, and Jaknife threw himself into the air, transforming from his vehicle mode into robot mode. His feet slammed down onto the runway, and he kicked down hard, launching himself towards the plane. With his arms outstretched, he felt his fingers wrap around the edges of the planes wings, and he held on as the added weight suddenly pulled the plane out of the sky.

Tumbling out of control, both fell back to earth, slamming hard into the runway, the impact cracking the tarmac, and breaking Jaknife's grip on his foe. They slid along the wet, rain-soaked landing strip, rolling with the momentum until they skidded to a stop.

Jaknife found himself lying face down on the runway, his joints aching, and one or two of his panels now looser than they had been moment before. His head was ringing, and he could feel the rain hammering against his metallic body and he lay panting on the floor. With a loud grunt, he rolled himself over onto his back and tried to lift himself up onto his arms. But a heavy foot suddenly slammed into his chest and pressed him back down onto the floor.

Clarity washed over him quickly, and his focus returned without warning. Looking up, a vague figure was standing over him, pinning him to the floor with their weight. They were angular, and dark, and their red eyes glared down at him like some demon in the darkness. But that was not what he was concerned with.

His eyes widened as he found himself staring up into the barrel of a Cybertronian blaster that was pointed directly at his own head.

"Autobot scum," a sinister voice hissed in the darkness.

"Oh, scrap," Jaknife said.


End file.
